They Have Hearings- On What Sounds Right

At Real Climate, Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann cover US Senate hearings on Global Warming.

What expert does the United States Senate trust on this issue?

Why, Michael Crichton of course.

...Today we witnessed a rather curious event in the US Senate. Possibly for the first time ever, a chair of a Senate committee, one Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), invited a science fiction writer to advise the committee (Environment and Public Works), on science facts--in this case, the facts behind climate change. The author in question? None other than our old friend, Michael Crichton whom we've had reason to mention before (see here and here). The committee's ranking member, Senator James Jeffords (I) of Vermont, was clearly not impressed. Joining Crichton on climate change issues was William Gray of hurricane forecasting fame, Richard Benedick (a negotiator on the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting chemicals), and David Sandalow (Brookings Institution). As might be expected, we paid a fair bit of attention to the scientific (and not-so-scientific) points made.

Many of the 'usual suspects' of half-truths and red herrings were put forth variously by Crichton, Gray, and Inhofe over the course of the hearing:

* the claim that scientists were proclaiming an imminent ice age in the 1970s (no, they weren't),
* the claim that the 1940s to 1970s cooling in the northern hemisphere disproves global warming (no, it doesn't),
* the claim that important pieces of the science have not been independently reproduced (yes, they have),
* the claim that global climate models can't reproduce past climate change (yes, they can)
* the claim that climate can't be predicted because weather is chaotic (wrong...)


This is definitely a good read, but longer than I can post here.

Crichton is a "popular" science fiction writer whose penchant for technophobic sensationalism seems to have drawn back a bit from criticism of any oil industry- related negative effects. Real Climate pins him down as basically a Luddite hack, but I think it's a little deeper than that. After all, there are any number of conservative science fiction writers who play the same schtick, write equally well, but make far less money at it. There are conservative science fiction writers who doubt global warming, but are far from anti-technology in their philosophy, and who write far better than Crichton. Larry Niven, for example.

If somebody writes mediocre science fiction, or for that matter performs a poor job in any medium, in order to be successful they have to please the promoters of that medium.

And there is Michael Crichton: media ho.